Television receivers, which are one example of a video playback apparatus, include those that are capable of print processing. Further, standards relating to print processing in television receivers have been defined by ARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Businesses) [ARIB STD-B24 Volume 2 “7.6.17 Functions for Printing” (Document 1) and Chapter APPENDIX 1-12 “Guidelines on Functions for Printing” (Document 2) and ARIB TR-B14 Volume 3 “Print Function” (Document 3)].
An API (Application Program Interface) of printing-related functions is defined as extended functions for broadcasting in Documents 1 and 2. Further, Documents 1 and 2 define operating procedures for the following three cases:
(1) a case where content for XHTML (eXtensible Hyper Text Markup Language)-format printing that a receiver has acquired from broadcast waves is transferred from the receiver to a printer;
(2) a case where information for acquiring content for printing from a receiver by a printer is transferred from the receiver to the printer; and
(3) a case where a receiver captures an image and transfers the image to a printer.
Further, the format of print data and a method of presentation by a receiver are defined in Document 3.
For example, with regard to an event (paper jamming, no ink left, etc.) that occurs in a printer asynchronously with respect to a receiver, it is desired in terms of user convenience that the receiver present a display that notifies of the event that has occurred. Here it does not matter if a message or user interface displayed by the receiver is displayed at the same time as the broadcast picture. Further, although the details of operation for presenting such a display at the receiver are left to the manufacturer, it is desired that such a display be made as small as possible upon assuring user convenience. The reason is to limit situations in which program viewing is impeded by a display informing of occurrence of an event.
There are proposals for the purpose of mitigating the problem of impeded program viewing owing to display of a message concerning an event that has occurred in a printer. These proposals include one in which a message is α-blended and displayed on the screen of the TV program (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-219353) and one in which it is possible for the user to change over the details contained in a message or to turn off the display (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-311586).
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-67332 discloses an arrangement where upon receiving an e-mail that has been permitted to be displayed even when viewing a separate program, the program is recorded on a storage device and the e-mail is displayed.
However, with the method described in Document 3 or Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-219353, program viewing is still impeded by the message although to a lesser degree. A further problem is that program viewing is impeded while an operation for restoring the printer from the error state to the normal state is in progress.
Further, a problem with the method described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-311586 is that an operation for changing the message display method must be performed by the user during the viewing of the TV program. This requires the user to manually carry out the operation. A further problem is that program viewing is impeded while an operation for restoring the printer from the error state to the normal state is in progress.
The method described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-67332 records the program unconditionally during the display of e-mail. The problem is that video that does not actually require recording, e.g., a still picture, also is recorded.